8mm Rod Bearings

DocTrucker

Anyone had examples of the ball race type of smooth rod bearing introducing an oscillation into the print? Just occured to me the y axis of the P3Steel is far more constrained than the x and the bearings less free to settle to an ideal position. I've avoided the polymer ones on this machine as I had seen a few so-so reviews of them.

Kolbi

@DocTrucker said in 8mm Rod Bearings:

introducing an oscillation into the print

(Of course with proper alignment and lubrication) I haven't had any artifacts from this, but with new bearings I have been able to detect 'rough' spots which I believe originate from the ball race; where the bearings were not fully smooth. This was detected where the carriage movement was smooth the whole travel but for certain portions it was louder with a faint 'rough feel'.
I made a simple 'exercise/break-in' macro that would move the axis from one end to the other by cycling15mm forward, then 10mm back, the entire length. I did this for X & Y for about an hour, then cleaned the rob, applied lubricant, and then repeated about 4 times. Then I copied and pasted the macro several times over to increase run time to about 8 hours. After that, all was smooth as silk and very quiet.

I swapped over to a spare pair of linear rails I had laying around because this issue. it seems to have cured the issue, but i did also up size the bed and other axis's to 300x300x300 I changed the standard bed support which in my opinion was shockingly flimsy to say the least.